Review: Redeemer (PC)

Have you ever hated your life and what it has become so much that you’ve decided to drop it, and just run and hide? I’m sure we’re all speaking theoretically here, but if that were the case, what would you do? Would you go to the countryside? Change countries altogether? Or find some wacky way to leave Earth? Surely you wouldn’t take refuge in a monastery, right?

Well that’s the plot behind Gambitious Entertainment’s REDEEMER, a glorious beat-em up available on the PC.

You are Vasily, an ex-soldier who turned away from your militarist life to hide away from the world, becoming a monk and studying the ways of emotional control through the use of martial arts.

Your ex-employer has found you, and sent its goons your way to bring you back for cybernetic implantation upgrades, but not before killing your fellow monks in some of the most heinous and brutal ways imaginable.

Through the use of the martial arts you’ve learned while hiding out in a secluded monastery, you exact revenge on the murderers, and biological experiments that are a product of the enemy you now seek to destroy.

The game is played from a top down perspective, similar to most twin-stick shooters on the market. You engage enemies with an assortment of martial arts moves like punches and kicks, but also using your local environment to pummel your enemies to a pulp. Everything from wooden chairs, to spinning metal fans can be used to do some serious damage to your enemies and the result is gratuitous violence that is immediately satisfying.

Chaining up move combinations flows seamlessly, giving you that feeling of being a total badass in an expert level of martial arts. One minute you’ll be punching an enemy, following through with a roundhouse kick to the face, before impaling them of a nearby coat rack through their sternum and followed by handing out punishment to their mates nearby.

There are two difficulty levels for the story mode: normal, and hardcore. For our review, we played on normal mode, although we reserve that for a normal mode, it certainly felt like expert or ultra hard – which isn’t a bad thing, because it means that you need to “git gud” to progress through the levels.

For the first hour or so, I played so terribly that I had my ass handed to me every moves, which slowly reduced in number after I became used to the gameplay. It’s safe to say that Redeemer has a steep learning curve, but as long as you don’t rambo it, you should start to make a dent.

The game also features a survival mode where you use your martial arts abilities to fight off waves of enemies in various locations you’ve unlocked by playing the story mode. You play as an unnamed monk from the monastery that is savagely attacked early in the game. Let’s be real here though – you don’t need to play as the main character in a wave based survival mode, because you’re not progressing the story in any way. It’s just mindless fun at this point.

Most parts of the environment are destructible, such as doors, tables, bookcases, and more. This may be the psycho talking, but it’s incredibly fun and satisfying to watch a big burly dude go through a book case, have a door thrown at him, and still cop a few fists and feet to the ol’ cranium. Couple this with the ability to impale, burn, electrocute, stab, or otherwise harm your enemies, and you’ve got some instant stress relief.

Redeemer makes use of the Unreal 4 engine, which allows the use of some seriously gorgeous special visual effects. Everything from the lighting to shaders was pretty well spot on, and gives off an insane amount of eyecandy in each scene.

The sound design is another key point that is achieved really well. As you can imagine when you’re breaking bones, burning faces, and stabbing people in the heart, unless it looks and sounds the part, it’s just another violent beat ‘em up that you’re used to. Thankfully, Redeemer delivers sound effects and a soundtrack that fits well. You know when you hear something that sounds like it hurts, and you jump back like awe? Imagine that, at every step of the way. I play some fairly violent videogames so you’d think I’d be able to shrug it off, but I found myself jumping back and empathising with the pain being dished out.

One thing we found a little odd with the game, and this has no detrimental effect on our review of Redeemer, is that the game seems like it may have been slightly rushed as far as file naming and structure goes, because the main executable is still called “examplegame”, which shows up in the Windows Task list as such. Again, this has no effect on our review, but something worth noting as far as releasing your product goes and making sure that everything is in order.

Overall, Redeemer is one of the most fun beat ‘em ups I’ve played in a long time. The plot within the story mode is enjoyable enough, but not all that gripping to deeply invest in the character. The gameplay on the other hand is enjoyable to the point that I became a giggling maniac on stream as I ran around kicking the living hell out of my enemies. Solid gameplay is the real reason you’d play something, right? Because Redeemer definitely delivers there.

The game is available on Steam right now for $14.99 USD, which at that price, is really good for what is offered. I’m sure the game will develop and add more content later down the track, but if you’re like me and need something to release some pent up frustrations on, Redeemer is a solid choice.

Matthew is the Deputy Editor and Webmaster of Sticky Trigger, responsible for keeping things running with hamsters. He's an avid PC Gamer (borderline Master Race elitist), and Twitch streamer. You can follow him on Twitch or his 140 character ramblings on Twitter.

Follow @StickyTrigger on Instagram

Newsri is the multi-purpose blog and magazine WordPress theme for all people, especially for bloggers and news, entertainment, tech website.. It is unique, lightweight, rock-solid and blazing fast to meet your needs.